'Metal Gear' franchise can't 'Survive'

Players will have to hunt animals for food and gather water to satiate thirst. The game is a departure from the series previous entries from creator Hideo Kojima. (Konami)

For fans, the "Metal Gear" franchise died when creator Hideo Kojima left Konami. With the departure of its auteur, the legendary stealth-action game couldn't exist. It would be like "Harry Potter" without J.K. Rowling or "The Walking Dead" sans Robert Kirkman.

The creator and the creation are so interlinked that any project lacking the other would be empty, and that's how players ended up with "Metal Gear Survive." From the remains of "Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain," Konami created an offshoot for the franchise. The strange side story follows a soldier who survived the XOF attack on Big Boss' Mother Base.

The character, which players create, is engaged in a gunfight when a wormhole opens up in the warzone. The protagonist manages to avoid being sucked in, but the U.S. captures the survivor and is handed a new mission. The soldier is sent into the wormhole, and that's how players discover another dimension named Dite.

It's a place hit by a strange plague that turns people into zombielike creatures called Wanderers. The U.S. was investigating this new frontier with the Charon Corps when the military platoon was wiped out. It's up to players to establish a base in this unforgiving land, figure out what happened to the commandos and find a way back home.

Although Dite echoes the landscape of "Phantom Pain," "Survive" has drastically different mechanics. Out here, players have to search for food and water to stay alive.

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They'll have to hunt wild animals and cook them. Meanwhile, water is a more difficult matter, with most of it being contaminated. Players will have to progress through the story to figure out how to build a campfire with a hanging pot to solve that problem.

In between, they'll discover that combat in "Survive" has shades of "Metal Gear Solid's" stealth gameplay. Just like in Kojima's games, players shouldn't take on several Wanderers at the same time. They'll be overwhelmed and die.

Players have several melee weapons to choose from to battle the Wanderers in Metal Gear Survive. (Konami)

Instead, it's best to stalk foes and eliminate them silently with a knife or bow and arrow. The raw and tense nature of hand-to-hand combat is reminiscent of "Dark Souls," with each encounter having a punishing degree of difficulty.

Often though, stealth isn't an option, and players will have to come up with other ways to fight enemies. That's where "Survive" borrows ideas from games such as "State of Decay" and "The Evil Within 2." The protagonist can hoist up fences and other obstacles to block a Wanderer's path, and from there, they can impale them with spears or other weapons. They can also craft explosives to deal more damage when enemies are huddled together.

Learning how to effectively craft barriers and weapons is important in a world where players will constantly be scavenging for raw materials such as iron and wood. They'll also uncover special containers that they'll have to carefully unlock through a minigame to find blueprints. These plans teach the protagonist how to craft better items.

The last part of the progression system is the skills and class system. During the campaign, players will earn Kuban energy for killing Wanderers and destroying special outcroppings. They can use these materials to upgrade their character using a skill tree of sorts. This lets players create heroes that complement their playstyles.

Players will need to zero in on a build if they want to complete co-op missions and the campaign, which is mildly intriguing but relies on a lot of the same siegelike mission design.

This foundation makes "Survive" different from Kojima's series. Although the game takes place in the same universe, it feels like a different project altogether. The dissonance can be distracting at times. With all the changes, it would have been better if "Survive" were a completely new project with its own identity.

At the moment, "Survive" feels as though Konami is performing a video-game version of "Weekend at Bernie's." It's trying to convince fans that there's still life in a franchise that expired when Kojima left more than two years ago.

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